Amazon recently rejected an advertisement which they felt is hurting religious sentiments. This advertisement was for a client of ours who has a book questioning Biblical Jesus while maintaining existence of Historical Jesus.

Here is the rejection email:

Thank you for submitting your ad campaign “xyz” for review. We are unable to serve your ad campaign because it does not comply with our Book Ads Creative Acceptance Policy. Specifically,

– Your Product Display Ad is for a non-fiction religion-specific book. These books include sacred texts (Qur’an, Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Guru Granth Sahib, etc.), commentary on these sacred texts, and educational or explanatory books about the specific religion. To help provide a welcoming experience for customers of all faiths and beliefs, please promote this book using our keyword-targeted ads (Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products) selecting keywords relevant to that religion or about religion in general.– Your book title or cover contains misspellings.

We appealed to them stating we are using Keyword Targeting ads and there are no misspellings in the title.

They wrote back:

Thanks for your patience. We have determined that the content of your book is not suitable for all audiences.

We review ads on a case-by-case basis and reserve the right to not run ads that contain elements that may not be appropriate for all audiences. This may include ads for non-fiction controversial books related to a particular religion. The content of your book may be interpreted to be offensive for readers of a particular religion and it may hurt their sentiments and therefor it is not appropriate for advertisement.